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Back in 2000, CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus pulled Verne Lundquist off the network's No. 2 NFL team and reassigned him to Southeastern Conference duty on Saturday afternoons.

Dick Enberg replaced Lundquist on the NFL, leaving Lundquist to feel as if he had been demoted. Silly man.

On Saturday, after 17 seasons on the SEC beat, Lundquist, once the radio voice of the Cowboys and sports anchor at WFAA (Channel 8), closes another chapter in his storied broadcast career.

Turned out that McManus did Lundquist quite the favor moving him to the network's No. 1 college play-by-play seat. Lundquist's body of work at stops such as Tuscaloosa and Gainesville and Oxford will be his lasting legacy.

Saturday's SEC Championship Game, which features Florida and Alabama, will be Lundquist's final call of a conference game. Only the Army-Navy game on Dec. 10 remains on Lundquist's CBS college football schedule.

Florida-Alabama kicks off at 3 p.m., with a pregame studio show starting an hour earlier.

On a conference call this week, McManus paid homage to Lundquist, making it clear that the 76-year-old broadcaster was not being sent out to pasture.

"The mantle of the premier college football broadcaster was passed from Chris Schenkel to Keith Jackson to Verne Lundquist," said McManus, son of iconic broadcaster Jim McKay.

"It's been a great year for Verne. We will obviously, in the pregame show and also at the conclusion of our broadcast of the SEC Championship, recognize the incredible contributions Verne has made to CBS and to the SEC.

"We thank him for his incredible run and look forward to the fact that he's still going to be doing college basketball and golf for CBS."